CHAPTER 20

The rest of the school year went by in a flash. All of a sudden it was time for Josh and me to graduate from eight grade.

Teresa wanted to throw a big party for us.

“No, abuelita, please don’t fuss.” I tried to explain that it isn’t exactly a major event to graduate from middle school.

But of course she and Digger came to the ceremony in the school auditorium. The place was crammed. They sat in the front row. Mom and Josh’s whole family sat right behind them and just as the disc playing the graduation song began, Dr. Will’s cell phone started to vibrate. He whispered something to Jenna and went out, down the side aisle.

I knew we would have to cross the stage in alphabetical order, so that meant Josh would be second, behind Eloise Armansky. He scooted out in his electric chair and took his diploma gracefully from the president of the George W. Graver Academy, Ms. Hermina Rodriguez, who we almost never saw. When you’re the president of a private school grades K through 12, you’re on the road most of the time fund-raising but you make sure you get back in time for graduation. I know this because that was the way it worked at my mom’s private college in Wisconsin. Anyway, I was number 14 in line and I aimed my chair straight at the president. I stopped in exactly the correct spot, took my diploma with one hand and shook her hand with the other. She said, “Congratulations Lizzie, I am proud of you,” and I said, “Thank you,” and poof! I was a high school freshman. Freshwoman. Freshperson. I was in the first year of high school.

When it came to placement in the class, Josh and I cleaned up. He was first and I was second. Mr. Hammersmith said, “It could have been the other way around, that’s how close you were.” I knew he wouldn’t say so just to make me feel better. I know the grade for my final essay in English class could have been improved with the judicious use of commas, but if you’ve gotten this far, you’ve seen all the commas I’ve put in to make up for it. I feel I have paid the comma price.

I got an A+ in Latin at least, and a little plaque in the shape of a shell. It says AD ASTRA! which means to the stars as if this was Hollywood. Josh won the math prize, a little bust of Archimedes, the father of mathematics. It looked to me like one of those busts of Beethoven kids get at the end of the year from their piano teacher.

Well, we ended up having a party after all. While we were busy graduating, Aurelia and Tom had secretly organized a big spread out on our porch, with Tom cooking hot dogs and hamburgers on a grill they had set up out on the beach, and Lia handing ’round potato chips and pretzels and pouring quarts of lemonade—the real kind, with fresh lemon slices. There was a surprise chocolate cake with CONGRATULATIONS, GRADUATES written on the top in white icing. I couldn’t tell if the d in Congradulations was there on purpose or because the cake icer couldn’t spell. The Hammersmiths arrived with Julio and the Blaines all came. Dr. Will had returned from his emergency, Josh’s brother Greg had brought along his girlfriend who didn’t do sports but played a cool guitar.

I was sorry that Trippy had to miss the fun. She didn’t graduate for another two weeks, but when she did, it was goodbye and curtains to Mercer Middle School and hello in September to North Side High. It would be scary starting over at the bottom of the ladder as a high school freshman in a three-story brick building with Up and Down staircases and an attached gymnasium. But in a way I envied her. She would be a minnow in the ocean of secondary school and I would be a big frog in the small pond that was Graver. In fact, my homeroom would be right next to The Hammer’s math classroom and my second-year Latin class would meet in the same room I’d been wheeling to all year.

I haven’t said so yet, but I liked my Latin teacher a lot. I liked the way she handled the four boys who always sat in the back of the room and cracked their gum and whispered to each other. She would say, “Will Sleepy Hollow please come to order?” and for some strange reason they did. Also she made many references to The Good Book, as in, “As The Good Book says, time and tide wait for no man.” That had a cool mysterious sound to it. I am embarrassed to admit that it took me a whole year to figure out that The Good Book was the Bible.

Trippy, though, would get the chance to start over, getting to mix with kids from three other middle schools and make a whole bunch of new friends. Even a boyfriend. But in a way it was comforting to know I didn’t have to make a big adjustment. I wasn’t going to think about Josh’s adjustment right now. The evening turned into a song fest, with The Hammer harmonizing with Tom and the Scarecrow in “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore” and “Kumbaya” and all of us chiming in as best we could. Who ever heard of an algebra teacher who rescued dogs and could sing baritone too? The evening ended in a kind of long drawn-out goofy version of “Good Night, Ladies.”